Friday, July 2, 2010

Kurds, Turkeys and Flotillas

Turkish PM says he has to delay his participation in the next Gaza peace flotilla which, he threatened, would be accompanied by Turkish military ships. And the reason given? Well, Erdogan has got some unfinished business at home... he needs first to drown Kurdish insurgents in their own blood.

June 30, 2010

Hundreds of Kurds fled their homes in remote mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan after their villages have been submitted to bombardment by Turkish and Iranian forces. With supplies running out, humanitarian flotillas urgently dispatched by Turkish and international peace activists are still making their way to the remote landlocked area which is largely out of reach of the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government.

The current escalation follows a surge in cross border attacks unleashed by the PKK and its Persian subsidiary PEJAK against Turkey and Iran. The rapid succession of humanitarian disasters in the region is threatening to stretch the world's ability to launch relief flotillas to the breaking point. Lebanon is already struggling to mount her own relief operation originally envisioned as two ships heavily loaded with humanitarian supplies and Haifa Wehbe. From the beginning the Lebanese authorities have been vacillating between sending the flotilla to Gaza and delivering relief supplies over land to Ain Al-Hilwe, the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, where 70,000 Palestinians, surrounded by the Lebanese army and barbed wire, are vying for a new Guinness record in population density (The camp's territory is exactly one square kilometer). Once the choice fell on Gaza, Haifa Wehbe has generously declared her participation canceled in order to boost the flotilla's storage capacity to allow it to include two huge bags full of silicon implants, a personal donation by the mega pop star to the starving population of Gaza.

Palestinian children in Ain Al-Hilwe are still waiting for Haifa Wehbe

And while we are on the subject of flotillas, one of the main Kurdish opposition groups in Syria declared that the solution to the Kurdish issue would be to give Kurds the right to self-government. The statement has immediately produced a rift in the Damascus Declaration for National Democratic Change, a motley coalition of secular, Islamist and minority groups in opposition to the current regime. The fellow dissidents explained to their Kurdish colleagues that before the Kurdish minority, that accounts for about 10% of Syria's population, demands autonomy, it should show the world some skill in taming wild Turkeys. Well, this is actually what some Kurds have been practicing for years now.

The new paradigm of Kurdish Turkish relations

July 1, 2010

Haifa Wehbe, Whales and flotillas

Philip Ammerman inspired me to continue this post with the following email.

Given that the original plan has indeed envisioned Haifa Wehbe's participation in the Lebanese flotilla, I believe that it's only apt and of a good taste to finish this post by exploring the natural buoyancy of some large marine mammals. And the first to come to my mind is... the Bryda's whale. Imagine a giant piece of silicon violently tossed around by oceanic currents. Such is the fury of a 15 meter long Bryda's whale launching itself against a pack of helpless sardines. (The following videos are best watched in full screen and at the maximum quality)

Impressed? And yet, even Haifa Wehbe, with her surgically enhanced floating capabilities, is likely to find matching the humpback whale's grace and easiness of movement under water challenging. Never mind the bulky and awkward Bryda's whales. Like huge underwater birds the humpbacks are flying in the open sea, their songs reverberating hundreds of miles across the ocean. So here they come - the humpback whales, the true Haifa Wehbes of the deep sea.